CCP Is Using COVID-19 to Achieve Global Dominance Faster: Senior UK Conservative

Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith leaves 10 Downing Street in central London, England, on Oct. 22, 2019. Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP via Getty Images

Unless the West wakes up, China’s communist regime is going to achieve global dominance even earlier than it had planned, Britain’s former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith wrote on Friday.

In an opinion article in the Telegraph, Duncan Smith said it was ironic that while parts of the Western world had been turned into an “economic wasteland,” the Chinese regime had announced 4.9 percent growth in China’s GDP in the third quarter.

The country from which the CCP virus originated, “and which did so little in the early days to help the rest of the world escape its spread, is now bouncing back by selling us the equipment we need to combat that very virus,” Duncan Smith wrote.

Duncan Smith outlined how rising demand for everything, from medical equipment to computers, have boosted China’s exports, resulting in a trade surplus of $58.93 billion.

“Even worse, investors in the West are queuing up to give China their money. U.S. investors just invested $27 billion in China’s first U.S. direct investment bond. Foreign Direct Investment inflows were up 2.5 percent year on year, amounting now to $103 billion,” he wrote.

A nurse adjusts her personal protective equipment (PPE) at a COVID-19 testing station in Stamford, Conn., on March 23, 2020. John Moore/Getty Images

‘Project Kow Tow Is Alive And Well’

“Project Kow Tow is alive and well,” Duncan Smith said about the economic and political pressure the CCP has been exerting on other countries.

Through its Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has made sure the poorer nations are “so utterly dependent on China” that not only do they not dare to challenge the CCP’s behaviour themselves, but it also “ensures that any complaint brought to the UN is vetoed,” he wrote.

He went on to say that the CCP’s intimidation also worked on developed countries.

“Australia has, quite rightly, called for an independent inquiry into the cause of the pandemic. China furiously publicly denounced them and imposed sanctions, a step no doubt intended to intimidate any others who might make similar criticisms,” he said.

“Lo and behold it has worked, leaving Australia alone in the firing line.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on June 18, 2020. Sam Mooy/Getty Images

A joint statement (pdf) released on Oct. 16 by Peak body Cotton Australia and the Australian Cotton Shippers of Australia (ACSA) said that the National Development Reform Commission in China had discouraged the country’s spinning mills from using Australian cotton.

This was the fourth time China had struck out at Australian exports since the Morrison government successfully petitioned the World Health Organisation for an investigation into the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus.

Previously, exports of beef, barley, and wine had been targeted by the Chinese regime in what experts and the United States have deemed economic coercion. There are also unconfirmed reports that Beijing is compelling Chinese manufacturing to slow down on coking and thermal coal imports.

Duncan Smith said the UK government was also pressured when ordered by the CCP to “immediately correct its mistakes” after confirming its offer to Hong Kong British National (Overseas) status holders of a route to British citizenship.

‘The Fault Here Lies With The Free World’

“The fault here lies with the free world,” Duncan Smith wrote, saying governments had for too long put quick profits over other longer-term considerations and human rights abuses when dealing with China.

“Business leaders, too, raced each other to invest. Now so many of them act as China’s useful idiots, defending its dictatorial government whenever required,” he wrote.

Citing the CCPs actions, including espionage, the breaking of trade rules, aggression towards Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other neighbouring countries, and the persecution against Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongolians, Christians, and Falun Gong practitioners, Duncan Smith said: “all of this is going on while the Chinese Communist Party dismisses or ignores the complaints of the rest of the world, knowing that the West’s money just keeps flowing in.”

Riot police arrest a man during an anti-government protest in Hong Kong, on Sept. 6, 2020. Anthony Kwan/Getty Images

He warned the Western world that unless it stops pouring money into China, it will become “ever more dependent on this authoritarian regime.”

“Even though business leaders and politicians don’t want to see it,” he said, “Xi Jinping has been clear in his vision for China: that it will have the world’s most powerful economy and military by 2049.”

Victoria Kelly-Clark contributed to this report.